WordSpace is honored to partner with Latino Cultural Center to present International Impressions.

YURI HERRERA-GUTIERREZ

Yuri Herrera studied Political Science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, obtained a master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of Texas, El Paso and a PhD in Hispanic Language and Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the editor of the literary magazine El perro.

His first novel, Trabajos del reino, won the 2003 Premio Binacional de Novela Border of Words made Herrera into one of the most famous writers of Latin America. The novel was also edited in Spain (Periférica, 2008) and won the Premio Otras Voces, Otros Ámbitos, being considered the best work of fiction published in Spain by a jury of 100 people, including editors, journalists, and cultural critics.

Elena Poniatowska qualified his prose as “stunning” and the novel as an entrance “to the golden gate of Mexican literature”.

Gabriel Wolfson describes Herrera’s work as “amazing, constructed from exchanging cultured language for popular talk, emphasizing the importance of names, and using the forcefulness of certain terms while wisely omitting others”.

His second novel, Signs Preceding the End of the World (And Other Stories, 2015) has led Herrera to being considered one of the most relevant young Mexican writers in the Spanish language.